Social Security is a complicated mess and is funded through a regressive payroll tax on income that engenders significant deadweight loss on the economy and is unfair to the subscriber.
All good reasons to stop enforcing the deduction and simply pay retirees via new money creation. It is actually how it works now anyway, except that workers now have 14% of their purchasing power stripped away while they are working.
The currency-issuing government, with a free-floating fiat currency, has no need for its own unit of account back from us and can afford anything that can be resourced in the private sector. The bonds that represent collections from paychecks hold no money to "fund" anything. They are a contract with our government to provide payment at a future date, not a bank account holding any actual money.
Until that date, they are simply a ledger entry. When the bonds mature new money is created with computer keystrokes and "that" is what funds benefit payments. If this weren't true Social Security benefits would not be at risk of curtailment when the debt ceiling is reached.
The flat universal benefit would fulfill the social obligation the nation has to its people. It ensures that no one retires in poverty by providing a steady monthly retirement income above poverty line. This monthly benefit would be indexed to chained CPI to account for inflation.
Ya, because that is working so well already in our faux system that hides the truth from workers to keep them lashed to their yokes. Nothing good ever comes from falsehoods and garbage econ. Unless you are suggesting that the payroll deduction be scrapped this simply describes a kinder, gentler form of wage theft. (ditto for Medicare and any other program limited to a "fund")
The universal benefit will be paired with a retirement account. These retirement accounts would be akin to a 401(k), a tax-advantaged personal account, that employees are automatically enrolled in. Unlike a 401(k), however, this account would be portable and would follow you as you switched jobs.
Holy inequality guarantee batman!!! Again, this is already available to anyone who can "afford" it. You haven't yet shown how you intend to "fund" the primary benefit, so can we assume you want to continue the 14% rip-off where the working class gets to pay down the national debt with their deductions and then continue to get blamed for it when they collect??
We go down this road every few years and conservatives get burned every time. There is a reason Social Security is called the "third rail" of politics.
Here's Greenspan schooling Paul Ryan about Social Security. He was, at least, honest when he was under oath.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNCZHAQnfGU&t=12s
Here is a piece I wrote recently on the subject. Sorry to link in comments, but I'm too tired to take that deep dive from scratch.
